Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Before I went into the studio this morning, I spun a sweet potato through the saladacco and then marinated the "noodles" in a dressing of peanut butter, lemon juice, soy sauce, sesame oil, nam pla, garlic chives, rice vinegar, ginger, and agave nectar. I figured it would go well with and help influence whatever ended up being dinner. Which was BBQ chicken. So I gave some big whole legs the espresso rub, and whipped up a saucepan full of the insane sauce that's so good that it keeps my wife married to me. (I will sell you the recipe for both rub and sauce for a thousand dollars.)

Our various hardy winter greens are nominating themselves for dinner as they flower, and in so doing opening up valuable bed space for turning and planting. Today's winner was the red Russian kale- a perennial favorite, for both flavor and performance- which got a mindlessly simple sautée with garlic and mirin. The sweet potato-as-green papaya salad was nice and soft and fragrant. The chicken, while definitely not pork, was pretty ridiculously good: just shy of burnt skin suffused with rub and slathered with sauce, balanced by tender greens, tangy spud slaw, and grated root pickles, and complemented by a 2005 Mas de Gourgonnier rosé from near my old stomping grounds in Provence. Plus a jelly jar of extra sauce. Did I mention the sauce? I give this stuff out for Christmas presents and get twitchy emails a month later fake-casually asking if I have any left, or maybe if I spilled some on the floor and haven't mopped lately.

It's that good, people. A thousand bucks. Is that so much to pay for possible world domination (or at least happy matrimony?)